I’m trying very hard not to get depressed over this, but I’m sure I’m going to be in tears come Friday, and certainly by the end of the mission 12 days after that. Not to be too hyperbolic, but it honestly feels to me like our country is on the verge of just giving up. Not only in space, but in everything you can think of, all fields, all categories of activity, all levels of society. Everything in America is diminishing, wearing out, running down, crumbling to dust. We used to dream big dreams and do big things. Now we ask how much it will cost and fret about whether it’s 100-percent safe. We bicker endlessly and worry constantly about whether any particular decision will help or hurt our particular tribe party in the next election. Now we just lower our gaze from the horizon to our smartphones and play another round of Angry Birds. And it doesn’t help my gloomy feelings any when I read articles like this one, which flat-out declares the space age to be over and we hope you enjoyed it, because low-earth orbit is the best we could do. We dreamed of Moonbase Alpha, but we could only manage satellite TV. And that seems to be enough for many, perhaps even most, people. And that’s the hardest thing for me to swallow, this realization that so many of the things I care about, the ones I’ve always cared about and held at the very center of my identity, are turning out to be nothing more than fads, and they’re all going out of style…
Photo: sunrise over Atlantis a few days ago, courtesy of the NASA Kennedy Space Center Facebook page.
